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Mozilla has released a few new screenshots of their latest Firefox 3.7 theme and interface revisions. I’m happy to see the bookmark toolbar is back, and the loading bar on top of the tabs is a very interesting idea.

Here is the old Revision 01 version of Firefox 3.7’s interface:

Here is the brand newRevision 02 of the Firefox 3.7 interface:

In comparison, I do have to say I like the direction they are going with this. Here are some of the features included and mentioned when discussing the Vista/Windows 7 version of the interface:

The Awesome Bar (or address bar, as those “normal” browsers might call it) does a great job at matching a web site saved in your bookmarks or history when you start typing in the Awesome Bar. By default, Firefox doesn’t give you a way of saying, “Don’t show these bookmarks there” so now somebody has written up an add-on to give you that ability.

The NotAwesome add-on for Firefox will help you hide any bookmarks tagged with “notawesome” from awesome bar searches. This way you can totally flag bookmarks you don’t want showing up in the Awesome Bar results.

You can pick up this great add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site. (credit for this find goes to Lifehacker, when in turn goes to gHacks too!)

Brief - Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy and intuitive as it gets. Designed to have exactly the right set of features, it is powerful and simple at the same time.

Fast Dial – Much like Speed Dial, this add-on gives you a quick visual way to access a number of web sites all from one page; showing thumbnails for each.

iMacros – Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work. If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of!

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar – This add-on does exactly what you would expect, it gives you multiple bookmark rows. Yes, I like it when they name add-ons about what they do.

There you have it, these add-ons have been downloaded more times than any other, and all will help you in one way, shape, or form with your bookmarks. Have another favorite that you think deserves to be on the list? Leave a comment, and tell me why.

You can always tell when a new way of navigating through pages becomes popular, because you end up with three or four extensions for Firefox that do the same thing. With that said, I have one more add-on for Firefox that tries to copy what Google Chrome does with its page you get on a new tab or browser window. New Tab JumpStart does a great job at bringing Chrome’s thumbnailed pages you have seen before. One nice feature that I haven’t seen others follow up on is the ability to permanently “pin” page so it never goes away. You can pickup New Tab JumpStart from the Mozilla Add-ons web site.

Have more than a few bookmarks you want to keep handy on the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox but don’t have the room? Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar, an extension for Firefox, will help you solve that issue by letting you add as many bookmark toolbars as you need.

Once installed, the options here are simple. You can enable or disable the multiple bookmark rows, and you can also set the max number rows to display. If it doesn’t exactly match up with your current theme or you want to tweak it some, check out this post from the mozillazine.org forums.

Foxmarks, one of my favorite Firefox add-on suggestions for bookmark syncing and backup, is changing names today. Foxmarks is becoming Xmarks. (Waits for the “X marks the spot jokes) The new Xmarks service looks to be more geared towards sharing links, ala Stumble Upon and Digg.

Why make the move? Well, one would guess that sharing links might be a more profitable business model, more so than bookmark syncing alone. Via the Xmarks blog, here are some FAQs for those of you who might have questions about the change:

Xmarks is a superset of Foxmarks – it adds web discovery features to our world-class bookmark sync.

If you choose to upgrade to Xmarks, it will work seamlessly with your existing Foxmarks account and will sync with your other computers running Foxmarks.

Foxmarks.com and our existing Foxmarks add-ons won’t change overnight. We expect to have upgrades to all three Foxmarks versions available by the end of March and we’ll provide you with more detailed info once we return from the DEMO conference.

We’re still hard at work finding better, faster ways to sync more things in your browser.

So what new features will be brought on with the new business model?

Smarter Search – In your Google search results, Xmarks will highlight the top three sites based on bookmarking history. Put your mouse over the special icon to the side of the search results to learn more information such as reviews, and rankings.

Site Info Lookup – Clicking on the Xmarks logo in your location bar will bring up a detailed box letting you know more information about the site you are on, and help you discover other sites just like it.

Then of course, you have the bookmark and password backup and syncing capabilities that Foxmarks already brought to the table. The Xmarks browser add-on is Firefox only right now, but they promise to have Internet Explorer and Safari versions running soon. Firefox fans can grab the Xmarks add-on here to try it out. It is worth pointing out that you can install Xmarks even if you have the Foxmarks add-on installed on your computer. Xmarks will upgrade your current Foxmarks add-on and continue to sync and back up your bookmarks (and optionally passwords).

So what do you think about the change? Excited about the new features, or disappointed that an old Firefox friend is changing its ways?

One of my favorite features of the old Google Browser Sync was the ability to sync my passwords between my laptop and desktop computers. Till now, no other program has gotten that right. That was the case till Foxmarks decided to roll out this new feature.

Password Synchronization is an optional feature for the newest version of Foxmarks that allows you to simply and securely synchronize your saved passwords.

Told you last week about Google’s plans to kill off the semi-popular Google Browser Sync extension. According to Ars Technica, while they were tossing the dirt in the hole – somebody decided to do this:

Google is distributing the Browser Sync source code under the BSD license and is making it available through a Subversion source control repository on the Google Code website.

Good news for those of us who really liked this add-on. The reason for its popularity is that it didn’t just sync up your bookmarks. It also would transfer your passwords, history and cookies.

Personally, I am looking forward to giving Weave a shot (Mozilla’s version of the same service) due to the fact that Mozilla would know how to do it best. Right now from what I have seen, it looks like it is still kind of buggy.

Not much is up on the Google Code page for BrowserSync but will be worth keeping an eye on in the next few weeks and months ahead.

If you haven’t made the jump yet, there are a few files you may want to make sure you back up before going from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. The first would be your password files. These files are located in your profile folder.

Backup the Firefox files called:

signons.txt

signons2.txt

key3.db

Copy and past them into the place you want to back them up to, and you are done. To restore them, make sure you don’t have Firefox running and then go into your current profile folder and copy and move them in. They should replace the ones in there currently.

Now to backup your Firefox 2 boomarks, dive back into your profile folder and look for a file called “bookmarkbackups”. Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved bookmarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them.

To restore your bookmarks in Firefox 3, go to Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks. In the Library, click on Import and Backup and click on “Import HTML”. The on screen wizard should walk you through the rest of the steps.

I have had a few friend and read a few horror stories Online about people who for one reason or another have lost their Firefox bookmarks and had to start all over. What they were not aware of is that you may not have totally lost your Firefox boomarks at all. There are backups hidden within your PC that I bet you haven’t even checked yet.

First thing you need to do is find your profile folder for Firefox. Depending on your operating system this may be in a different location. If you are unsure, be sure to check out this previous post: Where is my Firefox Profile Folder?

Once you make it in there you should see a folder named “bookmarkbackups”. Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved boomkarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them. To restore your bookmarks, you can launch Firefox, then go to “File” and then “Import”.

Also if you want to live a little more on the dangerous side (first make sure Firefox isn’t running) you could copy one of the bookmark backups, rename it “bookmarks.html” and place it inside of your profile folder replacing the one that is not right. As a bonus, if you need more help on how to backup Firefox using other tools – be sure to check out this previous most wanted post from the Firefox Facts archives.